


(Too) Close Quarters?

by orphan_account



Series: Making Do [5]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, MFMM Year of Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 04:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12999495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Phryne and Jack's stay on a cozy houseboat in Amsterdam leads to too much togetherness. Set after the events of "Modern Art", this is a short, two chapter fic for the December trope amnesty challenge (where I squeeze in way too many tropes for one short fic).





	1. Too Close?

“Your wife should still stay off the leg as much as possible,” the doctor repeated from shore, his Dutch accent coloring his otherwise perfect English. 

“I understand, Doctor. Thank you again,” Jack responded from the boat, a rented houseboat in Amsterdam’s Prisengracht Canal, their unexpected landing spot after a search for missing Vermeer canvas took them across Europe and left Phryne laid up with a broken ankle and fractured fibula. The odds that Phryne would stay off the leg now that the cast was removed was about as likely as Phryne ever becoming his wife in reality, Jack thought. Bbut that was of no concern to the doctor, now ambling away in the early evening twilight. 

A cold wind sharpened the late February dampness. Jack returned below decks to find Phryne examining the puckered skin of her left leg, the inevitable result of six weeks in a plaster cast. 

“Don’t scratch it, Phryne,” he began, but that too was a lost cause. “The doctor says to soak it in a basin of warm water.” 

“I know what the doctor said, Jack,” she replied sharply. “I was right here when he said it.” 

Jack had been practicing patience these past weeks — weeks of winter and darkness and yes, boredom, in this Northern city where he didn’t speak the language and had nothing of purpose to occupy his time. They should have been back in Melbourne over a month ago. Melbourne — where it was mid-summer, and Phryne had all of Wardlow under her (relatively) benign command, and Jack had his office, and his constables, and his own cozy, private, cottage. 

The houseboat was a crazy, romantic notion that suited them for four days — alright, possibly six days, given that Phryne was sleeping and on pain medication, and Jack had a new city to explore. By now, the walls were closing in. Jack felt every draft, and woke up in the middle of night with every passing boat or barking dog. Phryne’s restlessness annoyed him; her long silences grated; the sharp flick of her index finger as she turned the page of her novel was unbearable. 

“Jack, are you listening,” Phryne asked. 

Jack was not listening. “Sorry, darling. What were you saying?” 

“I think we should get two cabins for the return voyage,” she repeated. “Now that I’m mobile and need less of your nursing care. Besides, it’s one less occasion in which we have to pretend to be man and wife for propriety’s sake.” 

“It’s not a hardship, Phryne. Posing as your husband. I’ve told you that.” 

She cut him off. “More room then, and easier to keep our own schedules aboard ship.” 

“If it’s what you want,” he answered, still caught off guard by the request. 

“I should think it’s what you want too, Jack. I know this forced togetherness hasn’t been easy for you.” 

“Yes, but.” 

Phryne ignored his protests. “I’m going to soak my leg in the bath now, like the good doctor suggested.” Phryne pushed herself up from the sofa with a groan, placing weight on her left leg for the first time in weeks. 

Instinctively, Jack moved to her left side, grabbing her arm at the elbow and supporting her weight before the still-tender ankle gave way. 

Phryne waved him off. “I have to learn to do this alone now. It’s the only way forward.” 

Jack watched her set her jaw, gritting her teeth against the pain as she crossed the tiny room. 

All at once, the significance of her statement hit him like a freight train. Two cabins. She was saying they were over. 


	2. Another ship, another stateroom

Jack was perplexed. 

With Phryne back on her feet, they had exited Amsterdam in a whirl of motion. 

A train to Paris was first, and an overnight stop at the most luxurious hotel she could book on short notice. The hotel suite was sprawling and magnificent — with everything the houseboat had lacked — including vast amounts of champagne. The king bed they shared was large and sumptuous, and with Phryne free of the ballast of her plaster cast, their lovemaking had been vigorous and physically satisfying. 

They’d lost none of their ability to read one another’s bodies. 

And yet, Jack sensed, there seemed to be some invisible force field that blocked their ability to truly understand one another in less physical realms. It was an unfathomable reversal for a partnership that had relied so much on word play, and then deepened, over so many months, with achingly intimate conversation in the beds they’d come to share together. 

The next morning they were up too early, exhausted, hung-over and thrust back onto the Paris streets. There was a taxi, a fast train to Marseille, and a mad rush to board a French steamship bound for Port Said. By the that evening, when Jack had settled, alone, into his tidy first class cabin, he realized that he and Phryne had spent the day together in constant proximity, yet hadn’t exchanged words that weren’t somehow related to the motion of the day. 

Phryne was too quiet. It was unsettling. 

But then again, Jack noticed a few days later, so was the opposite. 

After a week aboard ship, Phryne seemed to be in conversation with everyone else but Jack — well-preserved society matrons at breakfast, the gossipy card-playing set mid-day, while dancing with bright young things in the ballroom until the wee hours. Jack dutifully accompanied her to meals, gallantly stepped back into the shadows as she stepped forward, and, every other night or so, was welcomed eagerly into her bed. 

He loved her desperately. He still had no desire to change her. But he hadn’t fathomed all the ways that change might happen, nonetheless. 

And then, on the day before they were scheduled to disembark in Port Said and switch to a British liner for the remainder of their journey, Jack reached the end of his tether. 

“Miss Fisher,” Jack called, rapping on her stateroom door. 

“Phryne, are you there?” he tried again when there was no immediate answer. He turned the doorknob. It didn’t give way. 

“Jack?” he finally heard from the other side. “What’s wrong?” 

After a long moment Phryne opened the door to let Jack enter the living room. Her hair was mussed and her voice rough with sleep. Her favorite black silk robe was tied loosely around her waist. 

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything,” Jack said, not bothering to hide the edge of anger in his voice. 

“I was asleep. What would you possibly be interrupting.” Her tone was plain, lacking either insinuation or guile. 

“Yes, well. I’ll let you get back to it,” he began. 

“For goodness sake, Jack. There’s no _it_.” Phryne sat down in a stuffed armchair and motioned to Jack to take the one next to her. 

Jack preferred to stay standing. “A matter has been brought to my attention,” he stated. 

“A matter?” she replied. “What’s with the formality, Inspector?” A bit of playfulness entered her tone in an attempt to lighten the mood. 

“I don’t know how you usually handle these things, Phryne. It’s all rather new to me.” Jack waved an envelope and folded sheet of paper as he paced about the room. “But when the captain’s office delivered this financial statement to my door earlier…” 

“What financial statement?” she asked before he could finish. “Let me have a look.” 

Phryne took the document from his outstretched hand and examined it closely. 

“I didn’t think we would stay together forever,” he continued. “No, that’s not true.” Jack paced as he spoke — towards the balcony and the back again — with great intensity. 

“After the last few months together,” he continued. “After accompanying Prudence to England, and spending the holidays with your family. After Paris and Venice and Switzerland and the interminable weeks in Amsterdam, I truly did think that we were committed to one another. With or without a marriage license.” 

“Jack,” she attempted, standing up and reaching for his hand, wincing slightly as the quick caused a jolt of pain to shoot through her injured ankle. 

“I was a fool, Phryne. Honestly, I never thought that when you turned me loose it would happen this way. Without a word from you besides a business letter from a ship captain and a four thousand pound invoice.” 

“There’s been a mistake, Jack,” she tried again. 

“There has been a mistake. I don’t have the funds to pay for a first class cabin. Particularly not after being absent without pay for the past several months while we gallivanted across the Continent. I don’t even know if I’ll have a job when we get back to Melbourne. But I suppose that never crossed your mind.” 

Phryne placed herself in front of Jack and forced him to stop pacing. The illogical, foolish, rant had gone on long enough. 

When he stopped, she gently placed her hands on either side of his face and brought his gaze level with her own. 

“Look at me, Jack,” she said, her tone as warm and compassionate as she could muster given the circumstances. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not letting you go. Ever.” 

She ran a hand along the length of his jaw and down to his lapel, pulling him closer with the gesture, until he had no doubt of her intention. She kissed him passionately, bringing her hands to the back of his neck. His hands instinctively encircled her waist. 

When the kiss ended he held her close. Near tears, he whispered, “I don’t understand, love. You’ve been so distant.” 

“I thought you needed time away from me, Jack,” she soothed. “Before the cast came off, you could barely stand to be in the same room with me.” 

“You had me in your bed two nights ago.” 

“Well, there’s time away, darling, and then there’s time away.” 

Jack laughed. After weeks of boredom that had turned to frustration and then to blind unreasoning worry, Jack finally laughed. 

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I’ve missed talking to you.” 

“Jack Robinson,” she smiled. “That might be the most romantic thing a man’s ever said to me.” 

“I doubt that,” he parried. 

“Alright,” she ventured, “But I assure you that you are the source of the most romantic line I’ve ever heard.” 

“Surely not that dreadful telescope line,” he chuckled, pulling them both down to rest on the plush sofa. 

“Surely not,” she repeated. 

Her eyes sparkled, the anticipation nearly as delicious as the answer. 

“What then, love?” he asked again. “What was my most romantic line?” 

“Miss Fisher, you’re needed at the station. There’s been a murder.” 


End file.
